"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines who you are when you can't help it." ~ Oscar Wilde

Menu

The Clock on Her Wall

Mindy stared blindly at the clock on her wall. No longer seeing the layer of dust on its gold frame or the hands frozen at quarter past two. Instead, Mindy was seeing a time before the hands had frozen. Instead of the wheelchair that confined her now, Mindy saw herself sliding across the kitchen floor in her socks, into the arms of a man who no longer thought her lovable. The halls had echoed with laughter and the pitter-patter of small feet. Even that was gone now.

Her chin dropping to her chest, Mindy shook with the agony of her regret. Tears she had kept at bay days before burned trails down her cheeks and salted her lips as she wept. The smiling faces of her husband and daughter mocked her from within. How many days she had spent wishing she’d done things differently.

But how could she have known. If Hank had driven the car that night, would he have been able to avoid the truck she’d never seen coming? Oh, she should have let him drive that night. Maybe he could have driven through the intersection faster. Her legs would still work, Hank would still love her, and Nelly’s little feet would continue to pitter-patter through the halls.

Mindy slapped the armrest of her wheelchair. She knew there was nothing she could do about the past, but as she once again looked up at the clock on her wall, she wished that the moment Nelly’s little heart had stopped beating, hers had too.

Written in response to the Literary Lion’s Clock Watching story prompt. This is the result of Blogging 101’s day thirteen task which was to try another blogging event. The story and characters are a figment of my imagination, inspired by the clock on my wall, which, by the way, has been frozen at quarter past two since before I moved in. (It’s never occurred to me, until this very hour that I possess the ability to take it off the wall and do something about it.)

While this story may be a figment of my imagination, someone somewhere is overwhelmed with survivors guilt. I could only hope to portray half the agony that they feel. My heart goes out to them.